Titan’s Pitch: Build a Music Room and <i> He’ll </i> Come

I see that Cal State Fullerton, my alma mater, is pulling out all the stops today to welcome back Kevin Costner, the local-grad-made-good who’s getting the 1992 Distinguished Alumnus Award.

Besides picking up a special elephant sculpture that honors him as alumnus con grata, the star of “Field of Dreams” and “Bull Durham” gets to throw out the first pitch at tonight’s Fullerton-UC Irvine baseball game, formally inaugurating the new Titan Baseball Field.

This afternoon, Costner (or “Kev,” as we Titans are permitted to call him) is taking time for a question-answer session with students. He’s even donated a copy of his 1985 film “Fandango” to be screened for CSUF students at no charge. According to an alumni-office spokeswoman, it’s a film Costner feels close to because it was his first starring role, and he thought students might particularly enjoy its story about two buddies who take a cross-country car trip before graduation.

All this red-carpet treatment is rather humbling. And it’s taught me a valuable lesson: I definitely should have opened those letters the university’s Alumni Affairs office has been sending me all these years.

For all I know, they were begging me to come and collect this year’s award. After all, I graduated a full year before Kev got his sheepskin back in ’78. Heck, I was covering entertainment for the school paper in my senior year and I never even heard of the guy. You’d think a future matinee idol might have made a bigger impression on his classmates. (But then, that’s the kinda guy he was. Even though he was on the baseball team at my high school--a full four years behind me back then--one of the star players on the team didn’t remember him at all. “Oh is that who that was?” he said well after Kev had hit the big time. “I knew a guy named Costner--I always thought his name was Keith.”)

I suspect they settled for Costner only after I failed to respond to repeated pleas.

But next year, folks, I promise things will be different. And in these recessionary times, I think I’d be a good bottom-line choice, something a business major like Costner should appreciate.

You won’t have to erect a $9-million sports complex to get me back. (You notice Costner didn’t show up to christen the $20-million hotel that was built on campus a few years back. Even though the revenue the school gets from it is helping pay for the new sports complex, somehow it’s just not the same honor getting to hand out the first bath towel.)

Here’s my proposal: How about a new music room in the university center, with a CD jukebox stocked with every record Buck Owens ever made? If you build that , I will come. And I’ll be delighted to drop in the ceremonial first quarter.

Give me the 1993 Distinguished Alumnus Award and I’ll match everything else Kev is doing to give something back to the school, and to the community. Let’s see, I don’t have any films to donate, but I could distribute free copies of the first concert review I wrote for the Daily Titan--better yet, the first story I ever got paid to write upon graduation. (As I recall, it was a rewrite of a press release about a Rod Stewart album that went gold. I still get choked up reading that one.)

I’d also be pleased to show the slides I took and discuss the hard lessons in life I learned on a backpacking trip I took to Europe right after commencement. (No. 1: Avoid the McDonald’s in Paris.)

In some ways, I think I’d make as good a choice for the annual award as a millionaire Hollywood celebrity. True, school officials didn’t select Costner just because he’s famous or because he’s starred in movies that have grossed enough money to pay for several universities. “The award goes to someone who reflects the university’s ideals,” Harry Gianneschi, CSUF’s vice president for advancement, told The Times recently. “He’s someone we feel good about.”

Oh sure, he’s brought joy to the millions with entertainments that don’t pander to our baser instincts or depend on extreme violence or the exploitation of women and minorities. On the other hand, at least I’m using my degree (communications).

I don’t want to complain, but what does it say for a school that gives its top alumni award to a business major who now dances with wolves? What about all those other biz majors who are now thinking, “Sheesh, I shoulda been a movie star!”?

And talk about giving back to the community--why, not only do my wife and I regularly eat at the family-owned Italian restaurant down the street from where we live (right here in Orange County), but quite often we also order coffee and dessert. The tip alone usually runs three, sometimes four bucks.

So OK--it worked. Bringing Costner down for this year’s award got my attention. And today, I’ll join the other alumni as well as current Fullerton students in saying to this year’s recipient, “Well done, fellow Titan.”

But I’m already looking ahead--I’m leaving May 4, 1993, wide open. Have your people call my people.